1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains to a soil compaction device according to the preamble of patent claim 1.
2. Description of the Related Art
Soil compaction devices of this type, for example a vibration plate with the type designation “Wacker DPU 7060”, are well known and have proven themselves in practice to be excellent, especially in compacting mainly coarse-grained or weakly agglomerating soils. Here, an oscillator driven by a motor is attached to a soil contact plate and sets the soil contact plate into vertical oscillation which then is transferred to the soil. The oscillation produced usually has a constant or even a variable horizontal force component that provides a forward, backward or steering motion of the vibration plate. In the process, the horizontal motion of the vibration plate is supported by the operator through a center guide post or a guide handle. At the center guide post, an operating lever can be provided that is coupled to hydraulic valves, with the help of which the direction of motion of the vibration plate can be adjusted using a hydraulic positioning system. Another known method is to perform the steering and direction functions using a remote control unit. In these remote controlled plates, the steering is commonly done by providing the oscillator with separate eccentric weights that are adjusted so as to work against one another and produce a circular or yawing motion of the machine.
Even with remote controlled vibration plates, the operator can always manually control the motion or steering process by pulling on the guide handle. The operator must press buttons on the remote control and at the same time pull buttons on the guide handle. This requires a large amount of force since the guide handle of remote controlled machines is much shorter than the center guide posts of non remote-controlled machines. Since the operator must simultaneously activate other operator elements der control such as control sticks, pushbuttons or the like, he can only hold the guide handle with one hand. This type of operation is very strenuous for the operator and thus is not beneficial to work progress.
The objective of this invention is to provide a soil compaction device that is easy for the operator to manually steer even when it is equipped with a remote control unit or with pushbuttons on an operator panel.